Hot Topics:

Most Commented

Alabama gunman kills school bus driver, seizes boy in standoff

By Phillip RawlsThe Associated Press

Posted:
01/31/2013 12:01:00 AM MST

Updated:
01/31/2013 12:53:13 AM MST

MIDLAND CITY, ala. — Police hostage negotiators were locked in a standoff Wednesday with a gunman authorities say intercepted a school bus, killed the driver, snatched a 6-year-old boy and retreated with the kindergartner into a bunker at his home.

The gunman, identified by neighbors as Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old retired truck driver, was known around the neighborhood as a menacing figure who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property, and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a shotgun.

He had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning to answer charges he shot at his neighbors in a dispute last month over a speed bump.

The standoff along a red dirt road began Tuesday afternoon, after a gunman boarded a stopped school bus filled with children in the small town of Midland City, population 2,300. Sheriff Wally Olsen said the man shot the bus driver when he refused to hand over a 6-year-old child. The gunman took the kindergartner away.

"As far as we know, there is no relation at all. He just wanted a child for a hostage situation," said Michael Senn, a church pastor who helped comfort the children after the attack.

The bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was hailed by locals as a hero who gave his life to protect 21 students.

Advertisement

Dykes was thought to be holed up with the boy at his rural property in an underground bunker of the sort used to take shelter from a tornado. Authorities gave no details on the standoff as it dragged on through the night and into the afternoon Wednesday.

Police SWAT teams took up positions around the property, where Dykes lived in a small travel trailer, and about 50 vehicles from federal, state and local agencies were clustered at the end of a dirt road nearby. Nearby homes were evacuated after authorities found what was thought to be a bomb on his property.

State Rep. Steve Clouse, who met with authorities and visited the boy's family, said the bunker had food and electricity, and the boy was watching TV. He said law enforcement authorities were communicating with Dykes, but he had no details on how.

At one point, authorities lowered medicine into the bunker for the boy after his captor agreed to it, Clouse said. The lawmaker said he did not know what the medicine was for or whether it was urgently needed.

Mike and Patricia Smith, who live across the street from Dykes and whose two children were on the bus when the shooting happened, said their youngsters had a run-in with him about 10 months ago.

"My bulldogs got loose and went over there," Patricia Smith said. "The children went to get them. He threatened to shoot them if they came back."

Missy Franklin, Jenny Simpson, Adeline Gray and three other Colorado women could be big players at the 2016 Rio OlympicsWhen people ask Missy Franklin for her thoughts about the Summer Olympics that will begin a year from Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, she hangs a warning label on her answer.